Clean unisons

[JStan40@AOL.COM]

In a message dated 10/6/00 9:50:03 AM Central Daylight Time, John Formsma 
writes:
<< Date: Thu, 5 Oct 2000 22:11:32 -0500
 From: "John M. Formsma" <jformsma@dixie-net.com>
 Subject: RE: Clean unisons
 
 - -----Original Message-----
 From: owner-pianotech@ptg.org [mailto:owner-pianotech@ptg.org]On Behalf
 Of JIMRPT@AOL.COM
 
 
 <<Notes can't be "too clean".
 But "clean" notes can be very lifeless.
 A unison which is very very slightly off, perhaps on just one string, will
 have more presence and sustain than one which is 'dead on'. Played one note
 at a time this should be no problem but if the combinations of notes, as in
 a
 chord, are all 'dead on' than the overall perception of the chord will
 likewise be more Lifeless than a chord where all the notes were not 'dead
 on'
 but just a tiny-tiny bit out.>>
 
 Jim,
 
 I read this last night and thought you were full of it. Heh-heh, my
 apologies, my good man. :-)  Had a Yamaha G3 and Diapason 183-E today on
 which I tried the above to test for myself. It is true that there is more
 "life" from unisons that are a teensy bit "out." However, lest anyone should
 get the wrong impression of how much, could you clarify and describe the
 amount of "outness"?
 
 This is how I describe what I think you are saying: what I did was to tune
 the unisons so that there was a little more "zing" in them (in the upper
 partials). Or, to put it another way, the sound sort of "expanded" or
 "bloomed" as the note was held. After figuring out this was what you meant,
 I went back to the totally still, dead-on unisons. There was a slight
 difference, but a difference nonetheless. From a musical perspective, the
 unisons were better that tiny bit off. There was more life.
 
 Now, your point being proved, why is that? I was thinking about it during
 tuning today, and wondered if it might be something like what we
 occasionally do with false beats. Sometimes false beats can be eliminated by
 mistuning a string in the unison, which clears up the false beat, but leaves
 that one string at a slightly different pitch than the other two. I assume
 that what causes this is that the sound wave created by the mistuned string
 offsets or cancels the false beats, creating the illusion of a pure single
 wave. Could it be that a dead-on unison has the same cancelling effect of
 sound waves going on? That the cancelling effect is such that some of the
 energy is lost? I'm thinking out loud, which usually gets me in trouble, but
 I'm asking anyway. What's your thought on this? And should we do all our
 tunings this way, or attempt to work more with voicing to achieve that kind
 of sound?
 
 John Formsma
 Blue Mountain, MS
  >>

John, Jim,

Forgive the intrusion at this point in this discussion, but is this not the 
very sort of technique that Virgil Smith has been espousing for many years?  
I have observed his tuning on a couple of occasions only, but they were about 
25 years apart (!!) and I was struck particularly on the second occasion that 
one "could" perhaps quibble ever so slightly with his unisons (were one so 
inclined--I most certainly was not), but that the overall effect of his 
tuning was a very live, very sparkling quality which served the musical 
purpose admirably.  

Is this ability to judge exactly how far one can go with any specific 
instrument one of the factors separating the sheep from the goats?

And would someone PLEASE tell me whether it's better to be a sheep or a 
goat!!!!!!

Stan Ryberg
Barrington IL